A
Bridge in Darkness
Carlos
Victoria
Translation
from Spanish by David
Landau
Pureplay Press, Los Angeles, January 2005
Chapter One
At age thirty-nine, Natán Velázquez found out he had
a half-brother.
“
I have a brother,” he told himself, purposely omitting the word “half,” which
he found a limitation. An only child, he had forever wanted to share
the mystery, or at times the shame, of having parents.
Reuniting with his brother, he imagined, would be like facing a lost
fragment of mirror: finding in another person the identical mole on
the right hand,
that same inflection in the voice, the same way of knitting one’s
eyebrow or glancing sideways. Even more, he could count on a companion
for life’s inexorable stretches; a confidant, a shoulder to lean
on during a lonely turn. Natán was a man given to fantasy, a man
who in another time—say, a century ago—might have written
poetry.
Now he was just a dreamer with no family ties, no kids, no wife, no
homeland—hiding
from life in his daily routine at a Miami export company that sent tanker
parts to Venezuela. His apartment had a balcony overlooking a lake that
reflected, at nightfall, a forest of pines on the opposite shore and gave
the fleeting impression that life repeats itself down to the last detail,
an idea that made him secure and also disquieted him. At times a breeze
rippling the water broke the stillness of the reflection, tossed a small
boat near a ramshackle dock, stirred branches that raised themselves like
arms to touch the edges of his quiet balcony, or frightened a bird of sinister
plumage that flew off with a squawk into the grove of pines. The bird cast
a shadow over the tiny waves before vanishing into the foliage; its lyrical
moans echoed through the vegetation. Then the humid air made a mist on
the glass of his sliding door and the landscape faded away, overcome by
the invading dark. The living-room lamp shone on the glass where water
drops had formed arabesques, indefinite figures. Natán felt
unhappy with his present situation, while his past had grown distant
from him.
Here, however, was his father’s letter, dated with a trembling hand
in the city of Camagüey, where Natán once had sauntered about
on streets paved with cobblestones, a backward youth unable to give his
all to the passions of life, whether to sex, to riches, to the hurly-burly
of politics or the quest for power. His father, quite the opposite, had
been a slave to those excesses that parade under handsome names: love,
justice, the general welfare, equality, discipline, heroism. To those pursuits,
Father had dedicated his energetic body and a soul that wavered between
reality and fantasy, tinged with an endemic dose of cruelty; because, or
so Natán imagined, a man like his father—a womanizer, a coveter,
a doctrinaire socialist who abused his underlings—could never
be the good-natured person he pretended or fancied himself to be. And
now
this unsteady letter pointed to other feelings in the old man: uncertainty
and guilt.
“
I never wanted to tell you, but you’ve got a brother—a bit
older than you, just two or three months, maybe four. I haven’t seen
him since he was a boy. He went to the States with his mother. Now that
your mother has died—I never told her, I didn’t want to give
her that shame, I gave her plenty before the divorce—I think you
should look for him. I hear he also lives in Miami. I have no way of knowing
where he is. You can try to find his aunt, his mother’s sister. Years
ago she wrote and asked me to do something for a cousin in jail here. The
lady’s name is Alicia Lastre. I don’t know if she still
has the same address and phone number, but anyway here they are....”
The rest of the letter was drenched in political diatribes that Natán
knew by heart. On this occasion they sounded more like a defense than a
reproach, maybe because their ideology had fallen into disgrace all over
the world, or maybe because the writer, a functionary in Cuba’s communist
regime who had a son—or two—in exile, now found himself at
death’s door; for in his last letter a few months earlier, the old
man had said the doctor gave him little time to live. Though he hadn’t
mentioned an actual illness, it seemed his heart or liver or some other
vital organ had fatally weakened; and seventy years of passionate intensity
were now pointing to their pitiless conclusion.
Sitting on his darkened balcony, Natán looked out at the faraway
lights of downtown Miami and thought about his father, who would soon die;
about his mother, whom he had buried in Florida, an old emigrant lady interred
in a country she had never managed to understand; and the lake’s
inky-black waters, headlights on the highway, songs of nighttime birds,
planes taking off at the airport nearby, shadows of pine trees on a
deserted shore led him to reflect on death, solitude, exile, and the
unaccountable
truth of being alive.
Neither the lively images from his television set, where all manner
of melodrama or foolish comedy unfolded, nor the occasional visits
of his
two lovers—Sandra the divorcée or Teresa his neighbor, a married
woman with two daughters—could stir in him even the tiniest excitement
that people need for any pleasure in life.
Every day, Monday to Saturday, he plunged into the dreary world of
commerce, where prices, motor serial numbers, and piece counts went
back and forth
over the phone. Faceless voices in different accents and languages
pronounced the same vacant courtesies. With a businessman’s cool dexterity,
Natán worked the invisible net that connected Miami to San Francisco,
New York, Chicago, Houston, Caracas and Maracaibo. The boss had been happy
enough with him to give him a brand new car. And with his commission from
a recent sale, he had made the down payment on his apartment by the lake.
He alone knew that his businessman’s identity was a sham. Inside
himself he felt unworthy, unsure, unhappy; and he was pushing forty.
“
So it seems I have a brother,” he mused aloud on reading his father’s
letter.
That night he clumsily delivered the news to Sandra, who burst out
laughing.
“
Don’t expect too much! I’ve got five,” she said.
They had sex on the carpet, Natán leading her to different positions
in order to fend off the boredom he had started to feel with her anxious,
overripe body—a body that pursued him at every instant. Sandra had
wanted to do it with the lights on, maybe so she could read her lover’s
face during the act. Natán wanted to unload the woman and didn’t
know how. He only understood the moment had come for the two of them to
set up house together or break it off. Sandra was tired of living alone.
Her son had left with his father, and she didn’t want to go through
life as someone’s sweetheart. She was also possessive, and she suspected
Natán was seeing someone else.
“
I need more time,” he said. “We should know each other
better.”
“
More time? Ten months isn’t enough? I’m thirty-five, you’re
almost forty. We’re not kids anymore.”
“
That’s just it, Sandra. What’s ten months? Nothing.”
When they were done on the floor, Natán, irascible and panting
for air, opened the balcony door. The apartment became small when Sandra
went
walking around barefoot from room to room, fixing her hair, drying off
drops that slithered on her flesh after a shower, criticizing his mess
of clothes or books and, worst of all, trying
to pick up the scent of his other visitor. Her own perfume stuck to
the
towels
and furniture with a dogged insistence. She already behaved like mistress
of the house. She wanted to bear Natán’s child.
“
It’s time for you to think about being a father,” Sandra
told him that night.
“
I’m not cut out for having children,” he answered. “I’ll
never be a good father.
My father wasn’t. These things are hereditary.
And if I think about what’s happened to my brother, even I can’t
complain.”
“
Your half-brother,” Sandra corrected him.
“
Yes, half—you’re right—my half-brother. My father says
his name is José.”
A man called José Velázquez. A disembodied being. Mustachioed
or clean-shaven. A full head of hair or a bowling ball. A smiling expression
or a sneering one. An ordinary guy or an illustrious professor. A dedicated
worker or a goof-off. A family man or a stubborn old bachelor like
himself. A model of balance or a nut case. A fugitive from the law
or a judge.
An atheist or a pastor. Quick to anger or easygoing, friendly or vindictive,
serious or a clown, honorable or a liar, clumsy or deft, with a sunny disposition
or a remorseless one. José Velázquez. Yes, Natán
reflected, names are empty of meaning; and his half-brother’s
name was no exception.
The telephone, a device that at times determines the course of things,
a minor deity in the service of Fate—a tamed and “technified” Hermes,
Natán mused in recalling his high-school study of Greek—now
put him in contact with the lady his father had mentioned.
“
Alicia Lastre?” Natán asked in a nervous voice. “Are
you the aunt of José Velázquez?”
Yes, she was. She spoke in the deliberate, dispassionate tone of someone
for whom life holds no further surprises. Months had passed since she
had heard anything of her nephew, who came and went without notice—a
wanderer who showed up on the spur of the moment and departed just
as unexpectedly, with an abrupt and puzzling farewell, never spelling
out
his plans, not
wanting to
give others a way of finding him.
He could be anywhere, Alicia said. One time he had sent her a postcard
with a date-stamp from Argentina. His trade was unknown, maybe because
he had none. Alicia had gotten to meet several of his lovers who had
called her, politely inquired about her health or welfare, and after
some minutes
of mindless chatter, with poorly feigned disinterest, asked after José.
He also had a few friends who apparently held him in high esteem but
always wound up bemoaning his shiftiness, his unsteady, evasive nature.
Natán decided to pay Alicia a visit. The elderly lady lived in a
tumbledown building in the poorest part of Little Havana. The trees, in
accord with the houses, were depressed and rickety structures, at times
concealing, with their threadbare foliage, the progressive erosion of walls
and roofs. Natán entered the former hotel, now a lodging for pensioners,
with the embarrassment of an inopportune visitor. The stairway stank of
cats’ urine. The carpet had all but disappeared under layers of filth;
but Alicia’s apartment, overstuffed with furniture and knickknacks,
was apparently immune from dust and gave off a seasoned elegance. The octogenarian
with a worshipper’s gaze wore a spotless white dress, and her
hands had a youthful sheen. Her gestures were informal, without ever
missing
their measure of courtesy. However, the light suffusing the room disturbed
him. It seemed to come from several windows, raising slivers of color
through the jam-packed dwelling; but the windows were actually shuttered,
and the
center of the room was lit with a single white lamp that overpowered
the faint glow of candles on an altar fixed to the wall.
After a bit of small talk about ailments that older people use to chat
up a stranger, the lady said quite unexpectedly, “José often
spoke about you.”
“
About me?” Natán asked in astonishment. “He knew
who I was?”
“
Of course. He saw you several times in Cuba and then here, when you came—ten
years ago, isn’t it? I remember him telling me: My brother has arrived.
I even asked him to bring you around, but he never answered me. That was
just like him. And I didn’t press him. It was at the time his mother
died—may she rest in peace. Thanks to her, I got out of the hell
that Cuba has become.”
“ No! Not possible. He must have been talking about another brother.”
“
Another brother? No, he’s an only child on his mother’s side,
as you are. As far as I understand, your father had no other children—or
none that anybody knew. José’s mother never married after
her fiasco with your father. When he met her she was a virgin, and he was
the only man of her life. It seems your father had this mysterious power
with women. He left his mark on them. I pray to God that He forgive your
father the harm he has done. He’s not bad in his heart; he did
me a great favor some years ago. He interceded for a cousin of mine
who was
a prisoner in Cuba.”
“
Why did José never approach me? Why didn’t he tell me
who he was? Did he say he had spoken with me?”
“
Not really. A number of times he came and told me: Today I saw my brother.
And then he started in about something else. I don’t ask him questions
because José has always been a bit odd, reserved about his own affairs,
too reserved, just like his mother, may she rest in peace. He got this
trait from her. It’s how he is. No one knows what he thinks.
He tells you what he wants to tell you, and not another word.”
“ Do you have a photo of him?”
“
I don’t think so. He didn’t like being photographed, any more
than his mother did. From boyhood he had a phobia about that. I, on the
other hand, being quite photogenic and also vain—why deny it—I’ve
got a tremendous photo collection, hundreds of photos. Too bad, many of
them are back in Cuba. Photos are good for showing other people how you
used to be; because, my son, you change, you change until you become unrecognizable,
and people don’t want to think you were any other way. Even José has
changed so much, he was such a handsome fellow, in a way he still is, but
if you saw him now—he’s gone white-haired, not a dark strand
on his head. José has suffered greatly.”
“
We’ve all suffered,” Natán said in a cutting tone,
and he was taken aback by his own aggressiveness.
“
That’s true,” the old lady hurried to agree. “All of
us do that, all of us—from rich to poor, young to old—but José suffers
more because he holds his suffering inside. He talks about this or that,
but not about his own problems. I’ve never heard him complain. José is
a saint, do you see? Some women have told me horror stories about him,
but I know it’s out of spite.”
They heard a frenzied scratching of claws at the window. Across the
lady’s
face, lit up by a gentle beam of the remarkable light shining in
the room—which
Natán supposed must be coming from a skylight, though he didn’t
look up for fear of being unseemly—there
passed a slight shadow of irritation.
“
It’s the cat on the balcony,” she said, “but we won’t
let him come in. He’s behaved very badly, very badly. We’re
punishing him. What was I saying? Oh yes, those women in love with
my nephew José.”
“
If you could give me a phone number, maybe through one of those ladies...
Please understand, I want to know him. After all, he’s my only brother—but
how bizarre it is that he has never contacted me, even knowing who
I am! He probably hates me.”
Alicia Lastre bared her gums.
“
José, hate? It’s obvious you don’t know him. José is
love itself, love through and through. But he’s always wanted to
be free. Even from his mother, whom he adored. So I think you’d only
lose time talking to those women—but maybe I have some numbers—yes,
even if I haven’t spoken with any of them for some time now—a
certain Gladys, who used to ring me up quite a lot, and another called
La China—also a friend, Gabriel Perdomo, who passed by here a couple
of times—so many names, my son, so many people! I’ve known
so many people, in Cuba and over here. It’s like a dream, or
maybe a nightmare. Time passes, people come and go, a lot of them
die. Can
I make you some coffee?”
Natán left the building at dusk. For a moment he hesitated, uncertain;
he couldn’t remember where he’d left the car. He was afraid
someone might have stolen it, since the area gave off a sinister feeling
in the half-light of day’s end. In a doorway, a trio of ragged men
drinking beer, their mouths attached to the flimsy metal cans, went silent
as he passed. At the corner, young guys with marked Hispanic profiles were
whispering under a street lamp. Their surly faces promised violence and
their bodies gave off an acrid odor so strong as to be unnatural. Then
he saw his car sitting defenseless at the opposite curb, near a cafeteria
that exuded the stench of rotten lard. In another doorway a gaggle of Cubans—no
mistaking their abrupt manner of speech—were making an uproar
about the double-dealing of international politics, their voices
eclipsing another, also distinctly Cuban, that jabbered from the
radio.
A transplanted people, Natán thought as he languidly opened his
car door—a graft that doesn’t take. He and his brother had
become denizens of that artificial world: a people who didn’t
fit in their own country or in any other.
As he started the engine, a car behind him peeled out with a big
noise. Natán wanted the other car to pass him, but the other, its windows
darkened, gave him the right of way. Natán turned at the corner,
then at the next and the one after that. In the unrevealing semidarkness,
the streets looked the same. On the rundown sidewalks, he found transients
whose miserable appearance discouraged him from asking for the directions
he needed. He was about to turn into a blind alley that ended at the river
when the shadow of an enormous ship hulking in the water gave him pause.
He was lost. He saw in the rearview mirror that the same car was following
him closely, with its lights turned off. The car’s windows, almost
completely black, gave no view of the driver. It must be a coincidence,
he told himself; but after driving several blocks with no particular aim,
and realizing the darkened car hadn’t stopped following him,
he halted and got out. Moving away from his door with a slight grimace,
he went toward
the other car, which had also stopped in the middle of the empty
street.
Night had closed in. He contrived to walk with the brazen and energetic
step he’d seen in B-films and TV dramas, groping blatantly in his
pocket to pretend he was carrying a pistol. As Natán approached,
the car pulled back slowly, spun around and quickly made off, throwing
up a toxic cloud that dissolved in the dark and sickly trees. In the car’s
rapid retreat, Natán had barely made out the driver’s
profile through the half-open front window.
Amid the shadows, all he had seen clearly was a man with white hair.
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